E-Paper
Aliens indeed exist, says Hawking
Do aliens exist? They do, but humans should try to avoid any contact with them, says well-known physicist Stephen Hawking.
Do aliens exist? They do, but humans should try to avoid any contact with them, says well-known physicist Stephen Hawking.
The suggestion come in a documentary for Discovery, in which Hawking will set out his thinking on the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Alien life, he suggests, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe — not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space, The Sunday Times reported.
The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like,” the 68- year-old was quoted as saying.
The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.
